COMPOSING FOR RECOMPOSITION: RHETORICAL VELOCITY AND DELIVERY

Rhetorical Velocity and the Amplification Effect – In the July 2007 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty special report on Iraqi insurgent media titled The War of Images and Ideas: How Sunni Insurgents in Iraq and Their Supporters Worldwide are Using the Media, Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo (2007) investigated how Sunni insurgent groups are strategizing the delivery and circulation of their media for local and international audiences. The RFE/RL report did a unique job of surveying “the products, producers, and delivery channels of the Sunni Insurgency’s media network” (p. 4); the authors, in addition, documented how the insurgent groups are carefully examining and crafting their messages, along with gauging both potential and ideal impacts of those messages. Although the main purpose of the report was to bring “Iraqi insurgent media from the margins to center stage so that outsiders without a command of Arabic can glimpse the ‘other half’ of what is happening in Iraq as it is presented by the other side” (p. 6), the report also provides important examples for theorizing how the fifth canon should be reconsidered in terms of how texts are delivered, recomposed, and delivered again. According to Kimmage and Ridolfo, “the Internet is more versatile than traditional delivery platforms because it can serve as a vehicle for those [traditional] platforms in addition to Internet-specific information platforms like websites” (p. 35), and the pair noted that:

Insurgents’ willingness to forego a centralized brick-and-mortar production infrastructure and their reliance on the Internet as the primary distribution channel for their media products have led to the emergence of a decentralized, building-block production model in which virtually any individual or group can design a media product to serve insurgent aims and goals. As the preceding overview of insurgent media products shows, both text and audiovisual products begin with simple units and proceed to more complex creations. For text products, the basic building blocks are operational press releases and topical statements; for audiovisual products, footage of insurgent activities and statements recorded by prominent insurgents and sympathizers. Of these building blocks, only the footage of insurgent activities and statements by insurgent leaders need be recorded on location in Iraq. One or more individuals working anywhere in the world can create everything else. (pp. 34–35)

We are specifically interested as compositionists in this report in terms of how the notion of “building blocks” is discussed regarding strategic and rhetorical affordances. The observations in this report should direct our field’s attention to an increasingly common and widespread compositional moment: strategically composing for the express, deliberate purpose of providing materials for future potential acts of appropriation and re-composition by others. Certainly, boilerplates and templates abound in corporate contexts, for instance, but the difference here is that these recomposers are perhaps unknown to the initial composer or creator of video and text—existing elsewhere across digital and sneaker networks, and potentially across the globe. These third parties may very well be news agencies or brick and mortar organizations, but they may also be much more dispersed: Using the example of “attack videos,” Krimmage and Ridolfo explain how the production and re-composition of content is diffused, and allude to a process of circulation that affords composers the ability to conceive of how their work may be recomposed:

In the case of short attack videos, only the footage of the actual attack need come from Iraq. Once an affiliated individual has received that footage and basic accompanying information, which can be transferred over the Internet or by mobile phone, he has only to add the insurgent group’s logo, a short title sequence, and perhaps a soundtrack with a motivational song. He then uploads the resulting video product to a free upload-download site and posts an announcement to a forum. The video-editing software required to produce such a video is cheap and readily available. (p. 35)

According to Krimmage and Ridolfo, the amplification effect is the way in which the media infrastructure serves “to amplify the message of the Sunni insurgency by using insurgent press releases and statements as the basis for their coverage of events in Iraq” (p. 61). In addition, emergent digital media infrastructure affords

a variety of means for amplifying the insurgent message. Materials posted to insurgent group homepages are regularly picked up and posted to broader forms. A message or video posted to one form is then reposted to other forms, thereby amplifying the message to potentially thousands of Internet users. From there, mainstream Arab media access the materials and use them in their print and broadcast reports. For example, Al-Jazeera often runs video clips from insurgent attacks in its newscasts. (p. 61)

What we see in this report, then, is a study of how composing practices are increasingly taking delivery into consideration in particular ways. Although this can occur in oral rhetoric, we see emerging in the variety of compositional mediums available an increase in this sort of thinking about delivery: How will the press advisory I write be recomposed by the reporters I have a working relationship with? How will my media packet be utilized in the production of broadcast news? From the perspective of the compositionist as rhetorician, we think of this concept as composing with rhetorical velocity in mind.